A printed circuit (PC) board provides a surface to mount and interconnect electronic components. In general, a PC board consists of an insulating sheet onto which conductive paths are printed. The insulating sheet, also referred to as the substrate, is often composed of fiberglass-reinforced epoxy composite. The printed conductive paths, also referred to as traces, are often composed of copper. After the PC board has been manufactured, electronic components are mounted on the substrate and attached to the traces usually by soldering. As PC boards are rugged, inexpensive, and highly reliable, they are used extensively in many types of electronic equipment and systems.
There are many different types of electronic components that can be mounted and interconnected using a PC board. Examples of such electronic components include memory chips, transistors, resistors, processor chips, and programmable devices such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA). A pin often serves as a connection point to an electronic component. In other words, when connecting two electronic components together, it is a pin of the first electronic component that is being connected (e.g., via a copper trace) to a pin of the second electronic component. An electronic component may have any number of pins. Some electronic components have fewer than a dozen pins, while other electronic components, an FPGA for example, may have over 1,000 pins.
As a PC board may have many electronic components, and as each of the electronic components may have many pins, it is desirable to have a system and method for connecting the electronic components in accordance with at least the electrical constraints and logical constraints of the pins.